Berkeley Overmind AI wins the 2010 StarCraft AI competition

In a lengthy piece over on Ars Technica, Haomiao Huang, one of the University of California at Berkeley students responsible for creating the StarCraft-playing AI, Berkeley Overmind, describes how he helped create the virtual wunderkind. Berkeley Overmind was the students' entry in the 2010 StarCraft AI Competition, which -- well, the contest is kind of self-explanatory now, isn't it?

The group would go on to win the competition, only after several trials against Oriol Vinyals, the group's in-house expert player. A PhD student in computer science and top tier player, previously ranked best in Spain and ranked among the top 16 players in Europe, Vinyals would eventually be bested by his AI foe, but the process would teach the team many things -- like how the AI could macro (grow its resources) faster than a human player could, but had difficulties formulating particular strategies against some of the more unorthodox ways to play.

It's a process of evolution far too lengthy to describe here -- the report on Ars Technica weighs in at a whopping four pages, so hit up the source link below to give it a read. If you want to follow the Berkeley Overmind more closely, check out the official site here.